This page last updated 09/12/2006

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14/01/2001.  A month or so before Christmas my VHF Alinco radio developed a fault with the PA module and was only developing about 1 watt output.  I managed to get around this by using an old BNOS amp I had kicking about to boost the power to the more normal 10 watts, but that wasn't an ideal situation.  Yesterday I replaced the slightly deaf Alinco with a nice shiny new Kenwood TM-261A which was imported for me by a friend who holidayed in Singapore at Christmas.  This has a much better receiver and I am able to remove the amp from inline.  
    Also, I've at last got the radio equipment installed into the new car.  The old Cavalier which was featured in RadCom a couple of months ago was sold at the beginning of November so I had taken all my kit out mid October.  I've now got the TM-D700E in which means that I'm active again with mobile APRS and G6NHU-7 can be seen out and about most days.

03/02/2001. I had an e-mail from my ISP earlier this week telling me my account was being deactivated and that the type of account I was using was not suited to my needs.  In fact, I consider that it was absolutely suited to my needs!  I think the problem was that it wasn't suited to their needs.  This has been widely reported in the on-line press, so check out here for details.  Unfortunately I was away on training at the time it happened so the gateway was actually offline (but still on the wireless) for a day, but I've reinstated my BT Internet account and am back on that now using their new "Anytime" package.

18/02/2001. Some people may remember (and it's documented above) that I had issues with BT Internet last July with my system not reconnecting to them after their two hour timeout.  Well, even though I've completely rebuilt my server since then I had the same problems.  I was not prepared for this to continue happening so I bought a third party autodialer called Dialer2000 which effectively monitors the dialup connection and if it falls over then it reconnects automatically.  It works extremely well indeed and I can recommend it to anyone who is having any problems with the Microsoft dialer.
    On the subject of my server, I had a major system failure earlier this week which resulted in the gateway being off air for two days and me having to do a complete rebuild from scratch.  I had installed some software which enables one to use virtual CD-ROM drives.  Effectively it fools the PC into thinking you have more CD-ROM's than are actually installed and you can use hard disk space to store CD images.  I've just got the latest Radio Amateur Callbook which interfaces with UI-View and was hoping to use this virtual CD software to save having to have the CD in the drive all the time.  However, the software I have is obviously not compatible with Windows 2000 and caused the PC to blue screen on boot.  I spent an evening on the telephone to an MCSE qualified friend and we soon realised that the only way out was a rebuild.  Luckily I was able to do that without losing any data at all. Aren't backups wonderful?
    There is a new server on the Internet - Simply send a message addressed to WHOIS and with the message text of a callsign, and you will be sent a message back with the callbook details.  Sadly this uses the FCC lookup database so it is only good for the USA.  Part of the reason for getting the above mentioned callbook is that I would like to be able to provide this service for non USA callsigns.  I will keep you updated via this page.
    There are two new UK Internet gateways - MB7UEK in Herne Bay in Kent, and MB7UWE near Bristol.  MB7UEK is already active and more details can be found on the "Other UK IGATE's" page and MB7UWE should be online in a few weeks.

21/04/2001. There have been no updates to this page for a couple of months simply because nothing has specifically happened with regard to the gateway.  Version 1.54 of UI-View32 has been running since it was installed on the 16th of February  without a glitch and I've just returned from a weeks holiday in the Channel Islands where there was no APRS activity noted at all. I left the gateway running when I went away and upon my return, everything is still ticking away nicely.  BT Internet's Anytime service is working well, and the two hour timeouts seem to have changed to be anything from two hours to a couple of days!  When the connection fails, Dialer2000 does a great job of recovering it.

21/06/2001. Again, not much has been happening.  The gateway continues to run 24/7 with only interruptions for internet redialling. Recently BT Internet has been giving problems with line dropouts but it seems to have settled down again now.  There are a couple of new gateways online around the country so be sure to check out the map to see where they are.  I drove down to Cornwall a couple of weeks ago and was pleased to see that there was some activity at least part way down there.  
The discussion page is offline at the moment.  It was hosted by a friend, but his ISP has changed hands and therefore he has changed ISP's.  I hope to have a new one shortly.

14/09/2001. For the third time in as many updates I have little to report!  Activity continues to increase everywhere and the gateway is working well.  I spoke to British Telecom a couple of weeks ago and they tell me that ADSL should be available in this area sometimes mid October.  I expect that to mean November at the earliest, but once it's here I will be signing up for it immediately. 
I've still not got a discussion page running, and for that I apologise but it wasn't getting used much anyway.  I will pull my finger out and work out a page sometime.  Don't hold your breath though!

On a completely different note, I've had some people over the last 18 months or so ask me if I take donations towards the running of the Gateway.  The answer has always been a straightforward "no", as I don't want to curry favours off of anyone.  However, one or two people have been particularly persistent and have insisted.  I still will not take any monetary donations, but if anyone wants to select an item from my Amazon wish list then I won't object!  Simply click on the logo for details.

Finally, I have added a download section to the web site.  This is for all new releases of UI-View, both 16 and 32 bit versions and should always be up to date.  This site supports resume mode (unlike Yahoo groups) and has shedloads of bandwidth.

23/09/2001. A second update in two weeks!  What are things coming to?  I've had notice that BT Internet are changing their terms and conditions to stop people using their service as an "always on" connection.  To be exact they have now defined their Anytime service as one which cannot be used for more than 16 hours per day.
So because I am poised to sign up for ADSL within the next month I have decided to comply with these conditions.  My dialler is now configured to hang up the line at 08:00 and reconnect at 16:45 each weekday.  At weekends the connection goes off for the required time overnight.  BT have said that any automated connection when the computer is unattended is also not allowed.  In theory it is very rare for the house to actually be unattended apart from 10 minutes for the school run twice a day, but I will comply with the time limits.

20/04/2002  I can't believe that I've not updated this news page since last September, but there has really not been much to report here.   However I'm pleased to see that this website is still getting a nice regular number of visitors, around 15 to 20 per day.  This might not seem a lot, but seeing as APRS and Amateur Radio really is a minority interest I'm not unhappy with that.

Anyway, what's happened.  Well, in their infinite wisdom, BTInternet did in fact dump me off of their system even though I was complying with their terms and conditions regarding time online, but I was breaking one condition which stipulated that auto-redial software is not allowed.  I signed up with Freeserve for a couple of months but then discovered an ISP which is aimed at businesses and is quite happy for users to stay connected 24/7.  They have a four hour timeout but it's simple enough to reconnect straight away and their web site specifically states that it's OK to do that.  This is good news! 

The promised of ADSL last October didn't happen.  BT have recently announced the next 100 exchanges that they are going to upgrade for ADSL and mine isn't one of them, so I have had Home Highway installed.  The difference over a standard 56K dialup is quite noticeable.  I'm using an ISDN router on my system now so I'm not dependant on one PC and a modem/TA and it's all much more reliable.  I don't even notice the four hour timeout because the reconnection speed is that much faster.

That's it for this one.  Hopefully it won't be seven months before the next update, but hey, if there's nothing to report then you never know

20/10/2002  OK, it was only six months this time, but for most of that there has been nothing new to report.

However, there is now.  My ISP who was happy for me to remain connected for 24 hours per day suddenly decided that they were going to impose a limit of 150 hours per week.  I decided that was no problem at all and configured my system to be offline for three hours per day in the middle of the night.  Then two days later they realised that they'd made a mistake and it should have been 150 hours per month (no, it's not BTOpenworld).  I reduced my online time dramatically for a couple of weeks but I quickly decided that this wasn't acceptable so started looking around.  We still don't have broadband in this area so that isn't an option, it has to be an ISDN connection at a mere 64K.  All the ISP's I spoke to would not provide a service that allows a continuous connection so I even went as far as looking into the costs of a leased line.  Mistake.  At a cost of just over £6000 for one year, I decided that wasn't worth the hassle either!  After speaking to a contact at work, it was suggested that I talk to Demon.  I checked and as it happens there is one particular scheme at Demon which does allow a 24/7 connection to the internet, but not only that it also has no timeouts and as an added bonus they also provide a static IP address.  It's not cheap, but it's not in the same league as the 6K per year for a leased line!  I signed up for that and am now back on a 24/7 basis.

At the moment, I am operating using an internal aerial.  Last weekend I took down the external vertical and replaced it with a 9 ele long yagi.  I have bought myself a Kenwood 2m multimode and am spending more time playing real radio from home.  I've been at this QTH for eleven years and haven't done any serious voice operating at all during that time so I decided that I really ought to.  I love 2m ssb and contesting so this will get me back into the swing of things.  The co-linear will be going back up outside within the next couple of weeks so my RF signal will be back to it's former strength.

I've changed my server.  The old PC, a PII-266 was starting to suffer with the number of programs running on it so I'm now using an HP workstation.  It's a dual PII-450 box with half a gig of RAM so although it's not up to what can be called 'current spec' it's surprisingly quick for it's age.  I've taken out the old video card that is totally unsupported in Windows 2000 and installed an out-of-date TNT2 card so again, it's not the fastest in the world, but it's not a slouch.  I've got most of the software moved from the old box to this new one and it still feels somewhat more sprightly in use so I'm very happy.

As you'll have noticed, the 'discussion page' icon on the left has gone red indicating an update.  I have decided that rather than host a discussion page on here to link to a brand new Amateur Radio forum at the Digital Darkroom.  I am involved with this forum in that I'm the moderator there!  It is all very new at the moment, so please give it a look.  You need to register to be able to post so please register (you can use your callsign as your name there) and then post to say hello.  One of the administrators of the Digital Darkroom is also a licenced amateur so we'll be very pleased to see you.

That's it for now.  I'll update again when I get my aerial back up outside.

01/02/03 Excellent news. It's taken a little longer than the couple of weeks expected but I've got the main MB7UIV aerial back up again and so my APRS station is back and fully active once more.  I must thank Colin, M1EAK and Danny M3MAD for their help yesterday where they braved freezing winds and even some snow to nail a couple of brackets to my house.  Top work guys, thanks.

The observant will have noticed a new navigation button highlighted in red on the left pane of this website.  In December last year a new dedicated APRS digipeater, MB7UH was installed at Colchester.  This digipeater which is co-sited with the GB3CE 70cms repeater provides excellent coverage for the whole of Colchester and surrounding areas and fills a much needed hole along the A12 corridor for any passing mobiles.   Since it has been on air I have had nothing but positive feedback and the number of stations active on APRS in the area has risen.  We still don't have many in this area but things do appear to be improving. 

09/06/03 - Fantastic news!  ADSL was installed here today.  Looking back at my news archive, it has been just one month under three years since I originally signed up for a broadband connection and in that time I've been through multiple ISPs, and changed providers so many times that it's unreal but I've always managed to provide a service.   There have been a few very short periods where the internet connection has not been 24/7 but I think that in the whole I've done pretty damn well.  It's just such good news that I've finally got a decent connection.

26/10/06 - I'm back!  It's been about four months since this website dropped offline, but the gateway itself has been active all that time.  To cut a long story short, I registered this domain through a friend.  We sort of lost contact and when it was renewal time I knew it wasn't going to be renewed.  He promised me previously that he'd renewed a different domain but that timed out and I had to re-register it so I knew that I was going to have to wait until mb7uiv.co.uk dropped off the world and then I'd have to re-register it.

Imagine my shock when on Tuesday this week I checked the domain on dnsstuff to find that someone else had registered mb7uiv.co.uk.  I was livid, I'd been cybersquatted and to make it worse there was a holding page in place with a 'contact us to buy this domain' note.  I looked at the Nominet terms and conditions and decided that the new owners had broken a lot of Nominet's conditions regarding domain ownership, specifically breaking a number of the 'Abusive Registrations' parts.  I contacted them, quoting my previous ownership, the RSGB, Nominet, the Department of Trade and Industry and within eight hours I received an email saying they'd cancelled their registration and I was free to re-register.

I beat the Cybersquatters!

Anyway, it's been over three years since I updated this website.  There's a simple reason for that.  Nothing has changed.  Absolutely nothing.  The gateway is still running using the same equipment, the only thing that's different is that the bulbs have gone on the wireless which isn't bad since it's been running since January 2001.  The software on the gateway is the same, the PC is the same.  It's static.  No need for any updates.

I'll go through the web site in due course and see if any updates are needed but I suspect they'll be minimal.

09/12/06 - Unbelievable.  Six days after my last update where I boasted that the gateway had been running since 2001,  I had a computer failure which has kept MB7UIV off air until today.  It went down on the 1st November and is now back running fully.  Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused

73